Review: Rain Check

*Thank you to the author for providing me a free e-copy in exchange for an honest review.*

This was great! As someone who’s always been more drawn to writing short stories and flash fiction instead of full-out novels, I always had trouble finding these types of compilations that were able to remain consistent throughout.

Noe has the rare ability balance humor and seriousness within his stories. The writing style, therefore, is definitely one of the strongest aspects of this book. The writing is so easy to fall in love with, and the best thing of all is that we get to see Noe’s wide range of talent through the different type of pieces this book contains.

There are stories that are more tangible, that read like regular short stories, and although I did enjoy the depth in those, I connected more with the stories that were more abstract, such as the personifications of the heart or the brain. I absolutely loved these, and I felt like everything was simply so beautifully written.

I think personally I was so drawn to these abstracted pieces because they are similar to my own writing style. When the characters are unnamed or are intangible, I feel like I can connect much more, because I can truly insert myself into the story without the interruptions of characters that seemed to have set identities. In these pieces, I felt like the stories seemed much more grounded and predictable, because many writings out there are similar; on the other hand, the abstract pieces seemed much more unique and relatable. Of course, there are always exceptions, and I do understand why characters are needed, but I very much enjoyed the abstract pieces of flash fiction, especially because the style is not one that is typically seen.

I think some of my favorites were “Self-Made Secret Agent”, “Writers Make Terrible Partners”, “Unrequited Love of the Self”, “Welcome Back”, “Waking Life”, “Corpus Corvidae”, “Angels”, “The Heart’s Back Door”, “The Mind”, “Occupied”, and “Broken Wishbones”. That was such a long list, but be sure to watch of for those when you read Rain Check!